The former French foreign minister claimed Brexit would be “an educational process” for Great Britain, warning: “There are extremely serious consequences of leaving the single market and it hasn’t been explained to the British people. We intend to teach people… what leaving the single market means.”

Even with the threats hurled at them. Brexit Secretary David Davis remains strong and is conceding nothing to the EU.

The remarks have been seized upon by EU loyalists in the media and political establishment, but Barnier’s opposite number David Davis has remained relaxed, explaining that the EU’s heated rhetoric is simply an attempt to bounce the UK into concessions on the 100 billion euro “ransom” it has been demanding as the price of an orderly Brexit.

“What [Barnier’s] concerned about is that he’s not getting the answer [he wants] on money and they’ve set this up to try and create pressure on us,” Davis said in an interview with Andrew Marr, reported by Euractiv.

“I’m not going to allow them to use that time pressure to force us to do x, y or z.”

He explained that “the point about the Europeans [is] they won’t talk about the future, they’ll only talk about so-called divorce proceedings.

“We are saying, ‘you’ve given us this enormous bill we’ll go through line by line’; we gave them a two-and-a-half hour presentation, they even complained about that.

“We’re going through this very systematically, very British way, very pragmatic way of doing it and of course [Barnier is] finding it difficult, which is why this stance in the press conference.”